Is offshore outsourcing worth trying?

Joe Machado, president, E-OPS Loan Processing

As published in Scotsman Guide's Residential Edition, September 2005.

Recently, offshore outsourcing has come out of the shadows and into mainstream America. Whether you’re calling your phone company or making travel plans, your 1-800 call might be transferred to someone overseas — and you might not even know it.

Why the trend toward offshore outsourcing? As consumers continue to seek products and services that are faster, cheaper and better, companies are looking abroad to gain efficiency. Thanks to the Internet, leveraging services from overseas is easier than ever.

Benefits for mortgage originators
Traditionally, offshore outsourcing has been a competitive advantage that only larger enterprises could pull off, but that has changed. Companies have emerged that empower brokerages to take advantage of offshore loan processing with the efficiencies previously limited to large lenders. These advantages include steep discounts on loan processing, faster processing times, 24/7 customer service, greater convenience and a better audit trail.

Deep discounts in loan processing appear to be the biggest benefit to offshore processing. In some cases, loans can be processed at almost half the price of domestic-outsourced processing, cheaper than in-house processing and approximately 40-percent faster. Loans can be processed at all hours every day. 

Good enough for the large lenders
These considerable efficiencies have addressed some concerns about sending work abroad. Even some of the nation’s largest lenders have been counting on offshore services for their business operations.

Recently, one major lender found that when consumers chose between having some loan functions processed domestically and doing so faster and cheaper overseas, more than 87 percent of their consumers opted to go overseas.

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